Subject: (urth) Kate Finn and Ted Griffin (Sorcerer's House spoilers)

From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:46:58 +0000

(spoiler space)

I haven't seen any discussion of this, and I honestly think that it's a thin
reed at best, but I think there's some suggestion in the text that Ted
Griffin/Ambrosius is Kate Finn's father.  I want this theory to be true,
because otherwise I don't see much point to the Kate and Biddy Finn
subplot.  But I'm having trouble with the timeline.

Kate, we're told, has to accompany Bax into the house to retrieve George.
While their in the house, Bax shows Kate Goldwurm's spire, opens a window,
which we've been told may have magical signficance, and they chat about
Ambrosius.  After that conversation, they go downstairs and learn almost
immediately that George has been found.  I have no idea why this would
happen or what it would mean, but it suggests a connection, and about the
only material connection we have to Ambrosius is the suggestion that he and
Ted are the same guy.  I also kind of like the idea that the bloodlines of
both Ambrosius and Black were needed to retrieve George.

Then there's the names.  "Finn" is pretty close to "Griffin," almost as
though Ted Griffin were hiding behind a slight alteration of his former name
to conceal his lack of aging, exactly as Martha Murray becomes Martha
Murrey.  It's also apparently Griffin's MO to fake his own death and abandon
his spouse--he shows up alive in Doris's letter, after all, and I don't
really buy the cliched "cop dies two years before retirement" bit that gets
a throwaway reference in the conversation with Biddy.  Or rather, it seems
like it might as well have been Ambrosius invoking the cliche as Wolfe.  Or
possibly he doesn't have an MO but moved on to a younger woman, and then got
bumped off by Goldwurm in a manner that seemed to be a strikingly nasty
illness.

Anyway, I like this theory, but I don't think the timelines match-up
exactly.  Biddy doesn't say when her husband died, but Kate is 24--putting
Biddy at a highest likely age of about 64.  I think she's a lot younger,
though--Kate is the only kid we hear about a pretty Irish family having, so
maybe Biddy is 50.  (She can't be too young by my theory, though--she has to
be somewhat older than Doris.)  A cop can usually retire at half-pay after
20 years of service, so conceivably he was as young as forty when he
supposedly died, having served 18 years in the force, starting at 22.  If
Biddy is about his age, then he could've died ten years before the story
started.  Or if he's about 10 years older than Biddy (not inconceivable if
he's in fact an ageless sorcerer who looked to be in his 40s or so), he
could've been allegedly 2 years out of retirement at 2/3rds pay and died
about 20 years before the story began, when Kate was very young.

That's a bunch of maybes that I can't recall being supported in the text,
but that's what more or less needs to have happened to give Griffin time to
set up a new identity, court and marry Doris, have a life with her, and die
"ten years" before the story begins, which is what Doris tells us happened.
(Or maybe Kate was 9 and Doris only had 5 years with Ted--that may make more
sense, as I'm not sure that a 4 year old girl whose dad was a cop would be
as likely to become one herself as maybe a 9 year old tomboy who idolized
her father when he died would).  I'd just like this theory more if we had a
time or approximate time for Kate's dad's death.  There's also the issue of
the women's relative age--if Biddy is 50 during the story and Ambrosius left
her 15 or 20 years earlier, she would've been 30 or 35, a little early for
Ambrosius to start looking for a younger woman (unless he's just really,
really shallow).  And Doris doesn't seem especially young--maybe in her
mid-30s?

Alternately, Bax is lying about all of this stuff and the tension in the
timelines is evidence that he got confused.  But I don't like that reading
very much.  I don't think Wolfe wants to reward reasoning that disregards
the fantastic as implausible and I don't think he went through the trouble
of creating mysteries about the supernatural elements of the story just to
have the right answer being that a frauster is making everything up, so
there is no answer.
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